Category: food security

California University of Pennsylvania student Rob Putaro volunteering at a local food pantry in November. Photo by Jeff Helsel via Flickr user SAIatCalU, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Bone-chilling weather and changes to a major federal food program have made things tougher than they would otherwise be for struggling families and the food banks that assist them. As Eliza Barclay writes for NPR’s The Salt,

Anti-hunger organizations say the unusually low temperatures are sending heating bills through the roof, cutting into the food budgets of many families struggling to get by. That means food pantries are bracing for more hungry people from their communities coming through the door in the weeks to come….

[Ken] Kupchick [of the River Valley Regional Food Bank in Arkansas] says that ever since some of the funds for food stamps that went to families in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program expired in November, the pantries his group supplies have seen a 6.5 percent increase in the number of clients coming in.

“It may not sound like a lot, but those cuts came at a bad time, when families really need a boost in food budget because of Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Kupchick says.

Ross Fraser, spokesman for the national organization Feeding America, says food banks all over the country are stretched pretty thin, but it’s the ones in rural areas that are really struggling to serve a far-flung population of hungry people.

The World Resources Institute has complied 18 infographics that provide an overview of some of the major challenges confronting humanity’s food supply. As Janet Ranganathan explains,

The world is projected to hold a whopping 9.6 billion people by 2050. Figuring out how to feed all these people—while also advancing rural development, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting valuable ecosystems—is one of the greatest challenges of our era.

So what’s causing the global food challenge, and how can the world solve it? We begin to answer these questions through a series of graphics….

From climate change to biofuels, from increasing meat consumption (see below) to food waste, many of the big issues are clearly laid out. Check out the post here.

You’ve probably heard it many times. While the exact phrasing varies, it usually goes something like this: The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by mid-century, putting substantial demands on the planet’s food supply. To meet these growing demands, we will need to grow almost twice as much food by 2050 as we do today. And that means we’ll need to use genetically modified crops and other advanced technologies to produce this additional food. It’s a race to feed the world, and we had better get started.

To be fair, there are grains of truth in each of these statements, but they are far from complete. And they give a distorted vision of the global food system, potentially leading to poor policy and investment choices.

To make better decisions, we need to examine where the narrative goes off the rails.

Foley goes on to carefully consider each of the assumptions of the dominant narrative. After debunking myths and pointing out blind spots, he proposes a very different summary of where we are and how we might face the future:

While the prevailing narrative about the global food supply is persuasive and sounds very logical, it is actually based on several wrong assumptions. It needs to be replaced by a more accurate narrative that can better guide future investments and decisions.

The new narrative might sound something like this: The world faces tremendous challenges to feeding a growing, richer world population — especially to doing so sustainably, without degrading our planet’s resources and the environment. To address these challenges, we will need to deliver more food to the world through a balanced mix of growing more food (while reducing the environmental impact of agricultural practices) and using the food we already have more effectively. Key strategies include reducing food waste, rethinking our diets and biofuel choices, curbing population growth, and growing more food at the base of the agricultural pyramid with low-tech agronomic innovations.Only through a balanced approach of supply-side and demand-side solutions can we address this difficult challenge.

These are big challenges, and there are no simple solutions. As a first step, though, we at least need to be sure that we get the story about the food system straight. After all, if we’re not even starting at the right place, we certainly will not end up at the right destination.

The full piece is really worth a read. Check it out here, and then share it with others.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine just profiled the latest venture from Doug Rauch, a former Trader Joe’s president. Here’s how Hope Reeves’ interview with Rauch begins:

You’re opening a store called Daily Table early next year. It’s going to sell food that’s past its sell-by date. Can you elaborate?
Yes, and food that’s cosmetically blemished or food that is excess — like fish that is perfectly wholesome, but not the fish they were going out to catch. We’re going to grab all of this stuff, bring it on-site, cook prepared meals with it and also offer milk, eggs, bread and produce. It’s going to be priced the same as junk food, basically.

It’s an interesting (and not controversy-free) concept. Find the full interview here.

Although it’s from a dozen weeks ago, an article in The Guardian didn’t lose any of its relevance over the summer. As Fiona Harvey describes,

People in Britain should eat meat less often, in order to help ease the food crises in the developing world, an influential committee of MPs has urged.

It could also help to mitigate the rampant food price inflation that has seen the cost of staple foods in the UK rise by close to one-third in the last five years.

The massive increase in meat consumption in rich countries in recent decades has led to spikes in the price of grain, used for animal feed, as well as leading to widespread deforestation and pressure on agricultural land, and has contributed to the obesity epidemic. By avoiding meat even for a day or two each week, people could help to ease some of these pressures.

Sounds like the people of Britain have something in common with the people of the United States, huh? Find the full article here.

Since the yearlong public media project Food for 9 Billion (which I’ve posted about regularly) appears to have concluded, I thought I’d share a piece in a similar vein from Robert Dreyfuss, writing for The Nation. It’s one of a series of four posts from his visit to Tanzania. (Here are links to the first, second, and third entries.) As part of a CARE USA delegation, in this post he visits Morogoro, “a bustling town with a busy marketplace and a network of paved thoroughfares that lead to dirt roads leading in every direction.” As he writes,

As in most of Tanzania, the majority [in Morogoro] are desperately poor, subsistence farmers. Nearly all of them farm tiny plots, growing barely enough to feed their families, if that, and few have any substantial surplus to bring to market.

One exception is the Uwawakuda irrigation cooperative farm. More than 900 Tanzanian farmers, including 414 women, have banded together to farm a 5,000-acre spread whose productivity is fed by a pumping station and irrigation system that provides underground water to the farm. Originally installed three decades ago during the era of Tanzania’s president and founder, Julius Nyerere, the pumps are creaky now, and thanks to a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) new ones are being installed. It’s a star attraction for USAID’s Feed the Future program….

Problem is, for the rest of the 2 million people in and around the area, things are bleak.

A drought, worsened by climate change and rising temperatures, has wracked the region. When I asked George Iranga, who manages the project, what happens to the farmers outside the coop, who don’t have access to irrigation, he says that they are struggling. That’s an understatement.

This recent piece from Beth Hoffman at Forbes highlights ways that surplus fruits and veggies can make it to those most in need.

… how can leftover locally grown produce get into the hands of those who can use it quickly, without expensive refrigeration, storage and staffing? The answer: via the web. Three year old AmpleHarvest.org is an online forum created to connect the dots between fresh local produce and those in the community who need it most.

At the AmpleHarvest website, gardeners can enter their zip code, find nearby food pantries, and get links to more information such as donation times and contact info. With summer just around the corner, keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to can, freeze, or force onto your friends those sometimes-overwhelming amounts of extra produce that come in at harvest time; consider sharing some of your bounty with folks near you who could use a helping hand.